Tsuji

I don't know, I have been doing ouro arcs since the issue went live. I haven't actually had any problems in the 1-19 arcs, which is before DP. It's a lot more liveable with the various damage boosts, and the end cost increases weren't that bad. But then again, I don't think any /psi dom should be crying about end costs, so this might not be all that helpful of an observation.

I think the new flavors of the month are gonna be mind/energy and grav/energy, for what it's worth.

I didn't see much synergy at first, but then I thought about it and you could actually do pretty well with this. You can get enemies in your thorntrops for the whole duration using ice slick + some slows, I think. Plus it would look pretty funny to see guys falling down onto your thorntrops.

Ice is well suited for a close up playstyle, so to better leverage the cone you might wanna pick up combat jumping + hurdle. I actually use fly on my dom because it's fun, but CJ + Hurdle is definitely very useful to AoE.

Nice article, I always wondered what i'd need to do to solo hold an AV. Might be worth getting the purple hold and AoE sets, since those would push me up closer to the required recharge. Then I could use the empowerment station + time lord to actually hit the recharge.

I think you should have included some info about S/L def capped doms though. Like you, I'm /psi, but unlike you (maybe), I have capped defense. Since I have drain psyche, it's not as huge of an issue to kill the AV before I run out of greens oranges and reds. I also use PFF to regen a bit if I get smacked.

I've attempted soloing GMs with the defense build too, but the main issue there is that GMs run away from me, for whatever reason. As a result I end up missing drain psyche over and over again and just give up.

I think you'll hear more calls for BSF runs once the bug for the MM power is fixed and the merit count increased.

Subjective feedback really IS hard to deal with, though. A lot of subjective feedback with the dominator changes was just bad. It wasn't bad because they disagreed with the changes, the problem was that the feedback was poorly thought out or consisted more of people shouting down the idea of there being a change period, rather than offering good suggestions. A lot of the feedback that WAS well thought out was actually implemented into the dominator changes, e.g. higher target cap for the low damage psi powers, reducing end cost on the tier 1 attacks etc.

For the TF story, I'd imagine that it was just not enough people providing feedback early enough in the development cycle. They have builds that things get put into, and if the feedback is offered too late, it may get INTO a build, but that build may not come until after the issue goes live.

As for costume pieces...Well, feedback with that is more difficult to integrate. By the time a costume piece goes onto test, it's basically done. Unless looking at it makes a small man jump out of your monitor and murder your family, the piece is probably going to go live as is. Any changes would be pretty small, since the content is basically done. To a lesser extent you can apply this to things that go into beta.

One possibility would be opening up the development process to player input even earlier, but seriously. Given how few people wanted to test the I15 changes, do you really think there will be a substantial number of people ready to offer subjective input on changes THAT early in the development cycle? The changes would end up being at the mercy of a very small group of players who have time to test that early.

Wow, I typed a lot.

They should use that animation for whirling hands.

But that stun Reichsman does, I think it's actually autohit. I haven't gotten to do the hero TF yet, but villainside it's autohit and AoE. Luckily it's not too long; my team survived cause we had stacked def buffs and ice slick up. It looks like defense buffs are the best way to handle that particular situation.

It's more important to take the powers you're going to have fun with. Way more important.

People just take boxing because it's a better attack; it's actually a better attack than SS/ jab.

Propel isn't even that good for controllers. Before the lift change I found myself doing more damage by using crush + lift, which animate faster and let you move in between strikes.

Crush is a DoT though, so propel has that going for it.

I figured I'd just tag on a note to daemodand's statement.

With grav/, learning to use singularity is really really important. It's a pet, but it also knocks everything that touches it backwards. It's basically a control power disguised as a pet due to the way the AI works. Enemies will try to melee it, get knocked back, get up, try to melee it, get knocked back, get up etc. etc. So it's a big source of control beyond just holding things.

Yes, the knockback is the primary issue with using energy assault and ice control. I feel your pain, since the first dom I made was Ice/Energy. It's kind of worse now since your best DPA ST attack is power push. If you're willing to hold every enemy you're going to attack, though, you can deal with energy's knockback. You also don't need to reroll unless you want your combo to be super good. It's just that earth benefits from energy more than ice does, and ice benefits more from psi than from energy.

Ice/Psi is still good. My AoE damage went up since before I'd only ever bothered using psychic shockwave, never took psychic scream. You also get to stack -recharge pretty easily to enhance your debuff capabilities. Also don't have to worry as much about perma dom since ice/ doesn't benefit from perma dom as much as the other sets do. You also have a lot of interesting IO combos you can play with.

I was doing ouroboros missions today to try out how it was at lower levels, definitely was far more enjoyable than I remember.

Earth/Energy is a really good combo. Powerboost + -def etc. I don't know if energy would work as well with Ice/. If you're going Ice/ Psi is nice to pair with it.

I don't remember if this was in the patch notes, but I did notice that toggles seem to stay on after you log off. I just logged in and all of my toggles were still on.

I also noticed that there's a listed limit when writing a profile now. Hopefully that's new and I'm not just really dense.

Maybe it's because I'm on freedom, but most of the people I talked to have no idea how to use the temp powers in the final mission of the Barracuda SF. Most don't even know what they do. I'm just posting this so I can link people to it when they ask about what the powers do.

First off, to get the temp powers, you need to jump into the large machine into which you've been leading the AVs. You need to do this after you've defeated all four of them: Black Scorpion, Ghost Widow, Scirocco, and Captain Mako.

The powers will stay with you for about 5 minutes. You can refresh them when they wear off by jumping back into the machine.

Most of the powers are auto and shared between ATs, but each AT also has a power unique to them; these help out with the ambushes and completing the SF without dying horribly. The click powers, when used, will take a while to recharge, but do not have limited uses, so there isn't really a reason NOT to use them.





***If the power is a click power, YOU MUST DRAG IT TO YOUR TRAY FIRST IN ORDER TO USE IT, AND MUST DO SO AGAIN WHEN YOU REFRESH THE POWER***





I'm going to list the powers by AT and explain their functions.



Mastermind power: This is a click power, and is currently bugged. Its intended function is to strip Reichsman of his invincibility ability. Currently, it appears to do absolutely nothing. : ( Whenever it does get fixed it will be the most important power, since Reichsman's invincibility is definitely the hardest part of the SF.


Dominator power: This is an auto hit 80 foot radius PBAOE hold. It has no target cap, and will probably hold every member of the 5th column that is in the room with Reichsman. It lasted for about 12 seconds on villainous difficulty.


Corruptor power: This is a PBAOE power that summons three of Scirocco's dust devils. If a tornado hits a held enemy, the enemy will instantly die. Before using it, make sure you are in the middle of a large number of held enemies, since the dust devils don't move very much or very quickly. It is, obviously, very useful when combined with the dominator power in order to quickly kill ambushes.


Stalker power: The stalker power will give the stalker an enormous stealth radius. The practical effect is that the stalker can now go through the laser doors in the back of the room without dying. There are failsafe devices behind the laser doors. Activating one will kill any 5th column currently attacking your group. However, each failsafe device will stop working after being used once, so it's best to ration them.


Brute/Soldier of Arachnos power: A click PBAOE endurance drain resistance power. Basically, the power makes it much easier to stand in melee with Reichsman. Without it you have to deal with constant end drain.

Grav has -recharge? Which power?

Well...I think the Barracuda's SF is a lot cooler than Khan's TF up until the part where the power required to kill reichsman is bugged. So maybe the villain content will start being cooler now.

What was your build like? My Ice/Psi plays pretty differently now, although I did actually respec cause I never had psychic scream before. I actually think this build is more powerful than my old one. I was definitely AoE outdamaging some of the SS/ brutes on the barracuda SF last night, though that was by virtue of the large range on scream.

ST's still pretty bad, but a bit better than before. Just wish subdue did some more damage or something, but I don't know how that'd affect its ST damage relative to everything else. I get jealous of energy assault until I remember i have drain psyche...

You only really notice the end issues if you're using PSW + psychic scream. Actually, I never had psychic scream before, so I'm AoEing stuff down a lot faster than I did before.

It's a little bit of a change, but after controlling everything, use psychic scream, THEN jump in for shockwave. Really, for damaging, I think scream is better. If I were gonna drop shockwave or scream and only have one AoE, I'd keep scream. I'm definitely going faster than I was, but I'm also feeling the end burn. It definitely makes drain psyche very useful.

You couldn't stack it multiple times without a kin or AM, which would let you take advantage of the higher damage cap anyway.

It's a good idea you have, Ryu. As an ice/ dom I'm already pretty used to doing that. For whatever reason lots of people seem to think ice/ sucks, so I'm used to explaining slows/ice slick/not using -KB immobilize. When I was leveling on bad teams it also helped to go "afk" occasionally to illustrate what ice did.

Ho ho ho.

Well...If that's the reason people say it's bad, they're wrong. Grav doesn't negate knockback unless the enemy is held.

From what I can tell energy assault is a pretty good set now. The knockback would be more helpful in PvP if you weren't grav w/ lift, but eh. There might be something I"m missing since I haven't used the new EA.

I had it when I was still Mu. Basically, there are two questions.

One: do you have any trouble with EBs/AVs? If the answer is yes, power surge will be good. It helped me against those quite a bit.

Two: Will you be able to remember to use it when your life is in danger? For me, the answer was "haha, no". I'd always forget about the power when I was about to die. Same with demonic etc.

If you can remember to use the power or have troubles with EBs, the power is *great*. Otherwise you might get more mileage out of the other two.

Well...Welcome to the super slow club, I guess. I made ice/psi to stack slows using scream + shockwave +shiver + arctic air. I've found it's pretty redundant since, at a certain point, they just die before they can attack again.

It's still very helpful when fighting +4s and, to a lesser extent, AVs. Plus you can slot some good sets into shiver if you six slot it; high ranged def + acc or ranged def, recharge, and max end. The max end would probably help you out a bit with end issues, at least.

Well, it's not a total mistake to grab chilling embrace...I don't think the radius is as large as arctic air's, but even if they hit the slow cap they'll still get -recharge. Plus you don't have to use shiver.

Hasten's definitely worth getting, though.

I use my FACE to mitigate the alpha strike.

I have high defense.

I don't see much of a point to jacking up the prices, like most of the posters here.

Like Louis said, inflation manifesting in amusing ways. The only thing I'd really change would be maybe making them available for some obscene number of merits. Maybe one purple = 400 or so merits, since you can get two level 25 LOTG recharge for about that amount.

Ranged defense is probably "better" for a /mental blaster, but most of the damage in the game is S/L, and if you close to melee a lot of enemies stop using their pure elemental attacks.

You can also get high S/L and ranged defense in the same build. My dom has about 30% range and softcapped S/L. It's like having capped melee defense for almost everything, since most melee hits have some S/L, while having protection against a lot of ranged attacks too.

Either way though, the OP was talking about a blaster tanking level 54 bosses using the ice pool, which indicates it probably WAS an S/L build surviving damage on a boss farm.